Jeremy Charoux: Rising to the challenges of tomorrow’s eductation

The new Business Development Director of the Charles Telfair Institute (CTI) was appointed in January to oversee its marketing department. One of his main objectives is to attract more students from the African region.

Born in South Africa from Mauritian parents, Jeremy Charoux, 37 years old, grew up at a time of social transformation, the abolition of apartheid. Although Jeremy’s parents decided to return to the Mauritian soil, he opted to stay in South Africa. Completing university in 1997 with a BA in Law, Jeremy joined the marketing department of Coca-Cola in 1998.

“I was lucky enough to get an internship at Coca-Cola, which after one year led to a full-time job,” says Jeremy Charoux. He then travelled all over the country, spending six weeks in different departments where he acquired a good foundation in business. Working on the brand Coca-Cola gave him the opportunity to meet people from many different countries. “There was an exchange of ideas and a lot of new thinking. It was challenging to work with a leadership brand.” Loving challenges, Jeremy Charoux shifted from the leading brand Coca-Cola to ‘challenger brands’ like Sprite and Fanta. “It was a really good experience. Sprite and Fanta were not number one and had to fight for market shares.” 

In the meantime, in 1999, he started studies for his MBA on a part time basis at Wits University. After ten years at Coca-Cola, South Africa, he moved to Australia to grab a good job opportunity at Coca-Cola Australia. He stayed within the company for another three years, and then went on to join Unilever, followed by Reckitt Benckiser. Being passionate about unlocking future growth potential, Jeremy Charoux spent much of his career developing and delivering growth plans within global organizations. He was lucky enough to work in a number of countries and have had experience in both developing and developed markets such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia, Australia and New Zealand.

And being a collaborative individual, Jeremy enjoys working with different people. He likes bringing out the best in people and thinks that a person cannot s쳮d in today’s world in isolation. He is strongly convinced that people need to constantly talk and connect.“I like interacting and working with people. Getting an idea toge-ther, then seeing the idea grow and come to life is wonderful. A group of people working toge-ther is in a much better position to come up with a brighter idea than an individual.”

At times, Jeremy felt that work in Australia was saturated. He felt a little bored and wanted to do something different. He then shifted to education. “Education, apart from being a key economic pillar, also has the ability to provide a meaningful contribution to improving the lives of individuals and of the community at large,” he says...

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